Somers, The

DESCRIPTION: Homeward bound the crew of the Somers are surprised by the hanging of three shipmates. "The deed is done! that cruel deed -- 'Three cheers' the captain cries ... and sad and slow our messmates dead We lowered into the waves"
AUTHOR: Horser Clenliing, "Quarter Master U. States Service" (source: Richard Snow, Sailing the Graveyard Sea:, p. 239)
EARLIEST DATE: 1843 (published anonymously in the New York Times, according to a Mudcat thread; Snow, however, says that it was published in the New York Herald)
KEYWORDS: grief execution mutiny navy death sea ship sailor
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Dec. 1, 1842 - Execution of Philip Spencer aboard the _Somers_
FOUND IN: US(NE)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Frank-JollySailorsBold 56, "The Somers" (1 text)
Richard Snow, _Sailing the Graveyard Sea: The Deathly Voyage of the Somers, the U.S. Navy’s Only Mutiny, and the Trial That Gripped the Nation_, Scribner, 2023, pp. 239-240, "(no title)" (1 excerpt)
ST FJSB056 (Partial)
Roud #31336
NOTES [8127 words]: "This ballad about a controversial and divisive mutiny in the U.S. Navy in 1842 is immediately contemporaneous with the event. Homeward bound on an unruly training mission in the brig Somers, the commander, Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, suspected a midshipmen and two ratings of mutinous conspiracy. Assisted by his officers he confined the accused mutineers in irons and convened a court martial, with the result that the presumptive ringleader -- a son of the Secretary of War -- and the two alleged co-conspirators were hanged at sea. When the Somers returned to Brooklyn, shortly after, questions were raised about whether Mackenzie's action was justified ...." (Frank-JollySailorsBold p. 119) - BS
This was apparently recorded on a CD called "Victory Sings at Sea" under the title "The Curse of the Somers," but that was a modern (drastic) condensation with chorus and melody by T. Morgan.
The description of the incident in Frank-JollySailorsBold is mostly accurate but has a few defects, starting with the fact that Mackenzie did not convene a court-martial. And Mackenzie faced a good deal more than just questions.
According to Paine, pp. 482-484, the U.S.S. Somers was a 259 ton brig built in 1842. She was the second American naval vessel of that name (there would be four more after her, according to Snow, p. 51), and was named after Richard Somers, who had commanded the Intrepid at Tripoli in 1804 and been killed in the operation along with all his men when his bomb vessel exploded (so Jameson, p. 610).
The ship was apparently intended to be a message carrier (she was said to be very fast; Melton, p. 3) and a training vessel, carrying a crew of 90. She may actually have been too fast; she was capable of putting out "a greater spread of canvas than could easily be managed" (Snow, p. 52) -- perhaps not the best idea for a ship full of inexperienced sailors. On the voyage described in this song -- only her second -- she was heavily over-manned, with 120 people aboard.
It was an unusual voyage. The United States Navy had had a hard time finding sailors in peacetime, and was trying to train boys into the role (Melton, pp. 18-21). Obviously they needed a ship to practice on. The Somers was chosen. Alexander Slidell Mackenzie was the captain; there were a few other experienced hands, but most of them were young. And they needed young officers -- midshipmen (Melton, p. 21). Several were the children of famous naval officers (including M. C. Perry and John Rodgers). Also aboard was Philip Spencer, the son of John Canfield Spencer, the then-Secretary of War in President John Tyler's cabinet.
Spencer was the youngest of the three sons of John Canfield Spencer and Elizabeth Spencer; he also had four sisters (Snow, p. 13). At the time, he was 18 years old. He seems to have been a genuine ne'er-do-well -- according to Snow, pp. 12-13, he had spent three years at Geneva College and never made it past his freshman year. His desperate father then moved him over to his own school, Union College, where he founded the ΧΨ (Chi Psi) fraternity -- which survives to this day -- but still did't do any schoolwork (Snow, pp. 18-20). Insofar as he worked on anything, he seems to have spent his time reading stories of pirates (Melton, p. 30). Melton, p. 31, suggests that Spencer's fraternity (which had a lot of funny rituals) was the young Spencer's way of thumbing his nose at his father, who campaigned against the ritual-heavy Freemasons.
A classmate said that he was an amazingly quick learner, but because he learned so quickly, he never studied, and eventually he would reach a stage in each class where he needed to study, so he failed. He was superficially friendly enough, but rarely joined other students in their games (although some of this may have been due to a physical problem; he was walleyed, and eventually had surgery for it). He mastered Greek and Latin easily -- a fact which was to prove important later. He was a very good and convincing speaker. But his relations with his highly exacting father were bad (Melton, pp. 14-15). And he had a deep lack of respect for anyone else's rules. Education clearly wasn't working for him; something else had to be tried.
Possibly Philip considered the idea of shipping on a whaler; he may even have signed on as a crew member. Perhaps that set his father thinking. Naval discipline might be good for the kid. And Spencer Sr. had connections: He went to Abel P. Upshur, the naval secretary, and obtained a warrant for Philip Spencer to become a probationary midshipman (Snow, pp. 20-21; Melton, pp. 34-35, is convinced he signed on to the whaler and had to purchase his way out).
It should be noted that Philip's intelligence was no help in preparing for the life of a naval officer. Being fluent in Latin was nice, but it didn't let you navigate a ship. That took mathematics.
Spencer was initially assigned to the North Carolina, and soon in trouble again. A senior midshipman, William Craney, aware of his connections, tried to help him out, but Spencer abused the friendship, took to drinking, and eventually attacked Craney twice. Craney tried to press charges. Matthew Perry himself suppressed the case -- and had Spencer transferred to another ship, the John Adams (Snow, pp. 22-24; Melton, pp. 34-36; McFarland, pp. 66-67). Where Spencer did it again. In Rio, he got drunk and apparently got into a fight with locals. His actions were so egregious that Charles Morris, the commodore in charge of the Brazil squadron, planned a court-martial. Spencer apparently offered to resign instead, and Morris took the easy way out of sending him home, since technically resignations were supposed to be turned in to the Secretary of the Navy (Snow, pp. 29-30; Melton, pp. 37-39).
It would have been better for all if Spencer had been drummed out. But one must suspect that Navy Secretary Upshur heard from Spencer's father. Instead of Spencer being out on his ear, he was ordered, "Report to Capt. M.C. Perry for duty on board the U.S. brig Somers" (Melton, p. 39). Which was commanded not by Matthew Calbraith Perry but by Perry's friend Alexander Slidell Mackenzie.
Captain Alexander Slidell Mackenzie (1803-1848) was important enough to have a DAB entry. He was born Alexander Slidell; his brother was John Slidell, the Confederate diplomat of Mason and Slidell fame. Another brother, Thomas Slidell, would become Chief Justice of Louisiana (McFarland, p. 11). But the young Alexander was fascinated by the feats of Oliver Hazard Perry in the War of 1812, and his older sister Jane in 1814 married Perry's younger brother Matthew Calbraith Perry (McFarland, pp. 14-15). Inspired by that family example, Alexander Slidell joined the navy as a midshipman in 1815.
He seems to have been a peculiar sort of moralist. When he went to Britain (a country he irrationally detested), he heartily condemned the "unbridled licentiousness" of Drury Lane (McFarland, pp. 25-26), and he seems to have enjoyed executions and seeing the manner in which they were conducted (e.g., in addition to witnessing some hangings, on one of his trips he went out of his way to witness a garroting; he not only watched it but wrote it up; McFarland, pp. 26-27). Snow, pp. 39-40, concludes based on his writing that he had no sense of humor at all. Not the sort of man to deal well with a wild youth!
In 1835, Slidell married a wife who was ten years younger (McFarland, p. 28). He took the surname Mackenzie in 1838 in honor of an unmarried maternal uncle who seemingly left him a legacy in return for maintaining the family name (McFarland, p. 29). A world traveler, he published several books, including biographies of Oliver Hazard Perry (a controversial book intended to discredit James Fennimore Cooper, according to McFarland, pp. 44-47) and John Paul Jones plus accounts of the places he had visited. He was in and out of the navy in the period from 1820-1840; in 1841, he was promoted to Commander. He was still in that rank when he commanded the Somers -- a command which helped him get away from the controversy with Cooper.
Mackenzie was extremely straitlaced, but his record as a sailor had its blemishes. He had done well enough as a lieutenant commanding a small ship, the Dolphin, but when given command of the new steamship Missouri, he wrecked her (Melton, p. 54) and was relieved of command. That might have ended his career -- except for his friendship with Matthew Perry. He was transferred to command the Somers, both on her first voyage to Puerto Rico (Melton, p. 57) and afterward on her voyage to Africa that is the subject of this song. That first voyage to Puerto Rico showed he was an unforgiving taskmaster: he failed almost half the young sailors he was supposed to train (Melton, p. 58).
I can't help but notice that the whole tragedy came about because of nepotism: Captain Mackenzie would have been on the beach for incompetence were it not that he was related by marriage to M. C. Perry, and Spencer would have been out of the navy on his ear were he not the son of a cabinet member.
It was in late August 1842 that Spencer arrived for his new assignment on the Somers. Mackenzie welcomed him -- but changed his mind when he found out about Spencer's misdeeds. Probably that was mostly because Mackenzie was so prissy, but he did have a point: the Somers was a training ship, and most of the trainees were still in their teens; the last thing they needed was to have a bad apple in their midst. Mackenzie tried to get rid of Spencer; the navy refused his request (McFarland, pp. 52-53; Snow, pp. 33, 72).
The list of officers for the Spencer's voyage was as follow, as printed by a contemporary newspape, was noteworthy: "Alexander S. Mackenzie, Esq., Commander; Guert Gansevoort, Lieutenant; M. C. Perry, Acting Master; H. M. Heiskell, Purser; Richard W. Leecock, Passed Assistant Surgeon; Henry Rodgers, Egbert THompson, Charles W. Hayes, Midshipmen; Adrian Deslonde, Philip Spencer, John H. Tillotson, Acting Midshipmen; Oliver H. Perry, Commander's Clerk; J. W. Wales, Purser's Steward" (McFarland, p. 80). Thus there were only three regular Navy officers (Mackenzie, Gansevoort, and M. C. Perry) for a training crew of more than one hundred! And note the two young men on the list named "Perry": they were M. C. Perry's sons -- and hence Mackenzie's nephews (Snow, p. 72). Not the sort of people who would be likely to feel close to a rebel like Spencer! Gansevoort, too, was fairly distinguished; Herman Melville was his first cousin, and Gansevoort was the main influence that caused him to go to sea (Snow, p. 75).
The ship set sail on September 12, 1842, for Monrovia via Madeira and the Canary Islands. Having completed her outward voyage, she headed for St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies (Paine, p. 482).
By naval rules, officers (and midshipmen were officers, even if at the bottom of the barrel) were not supposed to fraternize with the enlisted men. In any case, you'd think Spencer would have liked to hang out with men his own age. But Spencer fell into the company of bosun's mate Samuel Cromwell, a sailor in his mid-thirties, making him one of the most experienced sailors on board (Melton, p. 76). Experienced -- but perhaps not reliable; he was said to have smuggled liquor about a ship that Mackenzie intended to be "dry," and he also had a terrible temper and a tendency to express it with his fists (Melton, p. 77). He frankly sounds like a man with a chip on his shoulder who wanted to get back at the world. One of his jobs was inflicting punishment, and it sounds as if he enjoyed laying on the whip. And he was given plenty of chances (McFarland, p. 85). Mackenzie -- not surprisingly for a humorless puritan, was "a flogging captain" (Small, p. 68; Melton, p. 57, also refers to his willingness to use the whip).
And Spencer, supposedly, was finding ways to supply Cromwell with money, tobacco, and alcohol (Melton, pp, 78-79).
Elisha Small, the other man Spencer was accused of courting, had his own grievance: he was a former petty officer who had been demoted to seaman (McFarland, p. 97).
They were sinister people to hang out with. Melton, p. 78, and Snow, p. 121, say that Cromwell and Small knew how to navigate. I find this dubious -- navigating required extensive knowledge of mathematics, plus the ability to read a sextant and a chart. Small, who had once been second mate on a ship before being busted for drunkenness (Melton, p. 79), may have known the rudiments; I doubt Cromwell did. Many ships had only two or three officers who could navigate. But Cromwell, and presumably Small, could handle a ship and her rigging, which was also a vital skill. and Small could surely read a chart. A pirate perhaps didn't absolutely require a fully trained navigator, since a pirate might stay close to its base, but it had to have someone who could manage the sails! For a mutiny to succeed on the Somers, it either needed the support of an experienced officer -- or it needed Cromwell or Small.
And the Somers, crowded with boys new to the sea, was vulnerable to mutiny, because it lacked one thing almost all other navy ships had: Marines. One reason ships had marines was that they were trusted to control mutinies. But the Somers had only one such man, the Master-at-Arms, Michael Garty (Snow, pp. 61-62). if someone did mutiny, there was no one to stop him -- and no one to guard him if taken into custody.
It was on November 25 that Spencer made the move that would cost him dearly. Having observed that the purser's steward James Wales had had trouble with Mackenzie (on the Somers's previous voyage, Mackenzie had been involved in some sort of swindle which Mackenzie disapproved of, according to Snow, p. 80), Spencer took Wales aside, swore him to secrecy -- and revealed a plan to overthrow the officers, cast useless hands (including most of the young boys) overboard, set up a base in the Caribbean, and turn pirate (Melton, pp. 95-99).
Why approach Wales? According to McFarland, p. 113, Master-at-Arms Garty was apparently sick and Wales was substituting for him. So Wales would have had access to the ship's hand weapons.
Wales may have been unhappy with Mackenzie, but he sanely realized that piracy was no answer. It took some time -- Wales thought Small was watching him -- but Wales managed to get word to another man who was able to tell Lieutenant Gansevoort, who told Mackenzie (Melton, pp. 100-101; McFarland, pp. 105-107).
On the evening of November 26, Mackenzie and Gansevoort approached Spencer. Mackenzie's first question was reported as "I learn, Mr. Spencer, that you aspire to the command of the Somers?" In the questioning that followed, Spencer couldn't really deny what he had said to Wales, but he maintained that it was all a joke. Mackenzie eventually told him, "This, sir, is joking on a forbidden topic. This joke may cost you your life." Spencer was searched; the list of conspirators he had told Wales he possessed was not on him. At the conclusion of the interview, Mackenzie had Spencer put in irons (McFarland, pp. 112-113; Melton, pp. 109-111; Snow, pp. 100-101).
Spencer's possessions were meticulously searched, and a paper was found written not in the Roman alphabet but in the Greek (Melton, p, 113). Midshipman Rodgers knew enough Greek to read it. It was not actually Greek but English written in a slightly modified Greek alphabet (Spencer had used the terminal sigma ς instead of the normal sigma σ, and for some reason used a straight stroke, like a Greek ι or a Latin l, for τ, the Greek letter for T). It was hardly a code; it was just a transliteration (McFarland, p. 125). It takes very little knowledge of the Greek alphabet to read (though none of the three historians cited here seem to have understood Greek; Snow, in particular, fails to realize that the Greek alphabet doesn't have letters such as "j" and "w," so alternatives have to be used! The original paper is now lost; McFarland's photo section reprints a typeset version of it, though I don't quite trust the typesetting).
The message was easily read, and it was highly incriminating. The main document was a set of three lists: those who were "Certain," those who were "Doubtful," and "To be kept, willing or unwilling" (Melton, p. 113) In other words, those who were committed to the conspiracy, those who were perhaps interested by not committed, and those who would be kept around even if they opposed the mutineers -- those they needed to run the ship.
The list of "committed" had just four names: Spencer, Wales (even though he obviously was not committed!), Daniel McKinley, and "E. Andrews," which was not a name to be found in the list of the ship's crew! Neither Cromwell nor Small was on the list (Melton, p. 114). The officers started asking questions, particularly of those on the "doubtful" list (Melton, p. 115).
Conditions on the Somers were tense -- tense enough that, accidentally or deliberately, Small caused the main topgallant mast to be damaged by his carelessness, almost causing one of the young sailors to be killed (Melton, pp. 120-121).
Mackenzie, after a day or so, had Cromwell and Small taken into custody, and ordered the officers to carry arms at all times (McFarland, pp. 120-121).
To this point, Mackenzie's conduct was entirely reasonable. It was what followed that got him in trouble.
Unfortunately, the officers thought that the crew had been turning sullen for some weeks, and now it was getting worse. After Cromwell and Small were shackled, there was a moment when it appeared the crew was going to rush the officers (Melton, pp. 124-126; Snow, p. 114). Mackenzie and the other officers were constantly on the alert -- and getting tired and erratic. On November 30, four more men, from Spencer's list, were arrested and shackled (McFarland, pp. 134-135; Melton, p. 133).
Spencer, deprived of tobacco and hence probably even more antsy than usual, admitted to Gansevoort that he was obsessed with mutiny and had thought about it on both his previous voyages (Snow, pp. 128-129). In a way, it was an admission of guilt -- but since he hadn't gone through with it on the other vessels, where was the proof that he would do it on the Somers?
Mackenzie wasn't sure that order could be kept during a night like the preceding. He decided to call upon his officers (First Lieutenant Gansevoort, Acting Master M. C. Perry, the surgeon, the purser, and midshipmen Rodgers, Thompson, and Hayes) to ask their recommendation (Melton, pp. 134-137; McFarland, pp. 136-137, and Melton, p. 138 have the text of the instruction he wrote). What he apparently wanted was a justification for the death penalty. Which, as Melton, p. 135, and Snow, p. 131, point out, was the accepted penalty for mutiny, but the sentence could only be passed by a general court-martial -- and Mackenzie, a mere commander in charge of a ship, was not authorized to call such a court. Further, a court required five officers -- and while Mackenzie technically had seven, three were midshipmen and two (surgeon and purser) were not line officers.
As Snow, p. 131, points out, the period while the officers were meeting would have been the perfect time for mutineers to take over the ship; other than Mackenzie and three acting midshipmen (all 16 or 17 years old), there were no officers to stop them. But nothing happened.
The seven met for more than a day. They called more than a dozen witnesses and took their testimony (McFarland, p. 137), which was taken under oath, with the witnesses signing a summary of their testimony afterward (Melton, p. 139; Snow, p. 136, points out that, in one case at least, the witness later reported being pushed to sign in advance and then having his statement filled in from what the officers thought he should have said. And McFarland, p. 195, adds that their proceedings were recorded *in pencil*, so that there could have been later alterations).
The highly irretular proceeding did gather some information. But it did not hear from the accused (that is, Spencer, Cromwell, and Small); there was no testimony for the defense at all. And, instead of issuing what we might consider a warrant, or maybe an indictment (that is, a document encouraging further investigation and a trial), they issued a judgment. It was only two sentences long, but it occupies more than half of p. 138 of McFarland (also on pp. 139-140 of Snow. As Snow comments, "the first [sentence] was colossal, bumping over parenthetical hill and dale for more than two hundred words. It concluded that the situation "...require[s] that (giving them sufficient time to prepare) they should be put to death in a manner best calculated as an example to make a beneficial impression upon the disaffected."
All seven officers on the committee signed it. Melton, p. 142, thinks the officers were afraid: they didn't think they could make the nearest port before they were overwhelmed. At least, that's what they claimed on trial.
It was December 1, 1842. Mackenzie received the report, glanced at it, no doubt chortled with glee at the chance to be an even lousier person than he already was, and got busy. Note the phrase in the report, "(giving them sufficient time to prepare)." Mackenzie gave Spencer, Cromwell, and Small -- ten minutes (Melton, p. 143). In practice it took longer, of course, but that was just chit-chat; they were not given time to prepare a will or consult with a spiritual advisor; as was often the case on shipboard, there seems to have been no chaplain on the Somers. Mackenzie also ordered his officers to blow out the brains of any of the crew (who were forced to witness what followed) showed any signs of talking with the prisoners or of "mutinous gestures" (Snow, p. 141. No one ended up being shot, but it clearly wouldn't have taken much of a mis-step to start a massare).
Mackenzie went first to Spencer to tell him of his fate. Mackenzie made a record of the conversation, in which Spencer said his fate would kill his mother, and Mackenzie smarmily replied that being a mutineer was would bother her more than him being dead (McFarland, pp. 141-143; Melton, p. 144). As McFarland, p. 142, comments, "The sanctimony of the interview makes painful reading." (Mackenzie's transcript of that final conversation, which Mackenzie produced at his trial, is printed on pp. 198-200 of McFarland and pp. 222-224 of Snow. Reading it is a very uncomfortable experience. It is said to have been very hard to read, more so than most samples of Mackenzie's handwriting.) It reads like what it purports to be: notes taken during a conversation, though taken most hastily. However, McFarland, p. 198, suggests that Mackenzie might have written it down afterward, and the circumstances are certainly suspicious: When he was on trial, Mackenzie did not produce the document until after he took a three day break for alleged sickness (Snow, p. 222).
If Mackenzie's transcript is to be trusted, Spencer did declare that Cromwell was innocent; it made no difference. (Melton, p. 146; Snow, p. 143. It's worth noting: A lot of the sailors said awful things about Cromwell. But being an awful person doesn't make one a mutineer. He was not on Spencer's Greek list of mutineers, remember!)
Spencer asked to be shot rather than hung. Mackenzie refused (Melton, p. 145). Spencer also asked to be allowed to give the signal for his own hanging; that request was granted, but when the time came, Spencer couldn't do it (McFarland, pp. 146-147).
Interestingly, Small, who had seemed the least of the three conspirators and had been so nervous that he got sick during the tense period after Spener's arrest, proved to be the bravest at the end (Melton, p. 147).
It should be noted that hanging from the yardarm was a more cruel punishment than an ordinary drop; if properly done, a hanging on land would break the victim's neck and result in a very quick death. Hanging from the yardarm resulted in a slow death by strangulation (Melton, p. 149). So Mackenzie's refusal to shoot his victims meant he not only killed them, he killed them by torture.
He also rifled the dead men's possessions, discovering that Small had had a Bible. In it was a letter from his mother. Mackenzie read it -- and read it to his men, and made a sermon out of it while reading the Articles of War (that is, the rules that governed Navy life; Snow, p. 163). So apart from an illegal trial and death by torture, he also violated the dead men's privacy.
Mackenzie being Mackenzie, he would not bring the bodies home; they were buried at sea -- although, stickler for the inessentials that he was, he commanded that Spencer's body be put in a coffin before being thrown overboard; the other two were sewn into their hammocks (McFarland, p. 151).
The Somers arrived at Saint Thomas a few days later, but stopped only briefly to pick up supplies; few went ashore (McFarland, p. 152). She then headed back to New York.
The voyage had been hard on the officers. Master-at-arms Garty ended up in hospital. Gansevoort didn't, but his family was shocked to see him -- he had a severe cough and moved like an old man (Melton, p. 159).
The ship's actions once she was home was fascinating. She entered the harbor on December 14, 1842 (McFarland, p. 153) -- and dropped anchor and simply sat there. Mackenzie kept everyone aboard while he send acting midshipman Oliver H. Perry to Washington to directly carry a report to Secretary of the Navy Upshur (Melton, p. 159; Snow, p. 165). Mackenzie himself ordered many a dozen more men to be shackled and headed off to see his supporter and brother-in-law Matthew Perry (Snow, p. 165. Snow, p. 166, described Mackenzie as picking the dozen almost at random. At least he had them moved off the Somers and sent to the larger North Carolina, so that they could be kept in better conditions.) Those who tried to visit the ship to learn what was going on were ordered away (Snow, p. 167). Mackenzie even lied to his wife about what had happened (Snow, p. 168).
On December 17, the first newspaper stories ran (McFarland, p. 158). They didn't have all their facts right, and for the most part were pro-Mackenzie -- until someone who signed himself "S." wrote a detailed address supplying some facts about Spencer that had not come out before and demonstrating the illegality of Spencer's conduct (Melton, p. 164). This brought home just how much power Mackenzie had had on shipboard -- and showed how he had abused it. It is likely that "S." was Philip Spencer's father John C. Spencer (although he denied it; McFarland, p. 163), but even if someone else wrote the article, it changed the situation for Mackenzie.
Navy Secretary Upshur had little choice but to order a Court of Inquiry (Melton, p. 166). The leaders were certainly distinguished; one of them was Captain Charles Stewart (Melton, p. 167), who almost thirty years earlier had been a commander of the U.S.S. Constitution in the War of 1812, winning a battle with the Cyane and the Levant
As Snow, p. 169, points out, the Court that met to examine Mackenzie's conduct had rules that were generous to Mackenzie. Rather than a prosecutor opening the case, Mackenzie was given the first word. And he didn't even have to talk to do it. The trial opened with the reading aloud of Mackenzie's carefully-crafted third edition of his report -- 13,000 words, fully of rhetorical flourishes and invocations of patriotism and religion. It took two hours to inflict it upon the panel (Snow, p. 171).
Mackenzie was clearly well-prepared. In addition to his opening presentation, it appears his officers had concerted their testimony (Melton, pp. 174-175; Snow, p. 175, reminds that the crew was being held incommunicado aboard the Somers, and Gansevoort was there for much of the time prodding them to produce the right testimony. He notes on p. 176 that Mackenzie's officers had all signed the report calling for the executions, so if Mackenzie was convicted, they would be tarred with the same brush), Mackenzie himself appears to have made preparations to assassinate the characters of the men he had hanged (Melton, pp. 175-176), and tried to force the publication of some of the Spencer family's uncomfortable letters (Snow, p. 180).
Once Mackenzie's initial declamation was out of the way, they called Purser's Assistant Wales, the man who had first reported Spencer's plans to Mackenzie. Wales's testimony was very favorable to Mackenzie (Melton, pp. 176-177), but recall that Mackenzie was Wales's boss and could probably determine his future -- indeed, Mackenzie had openly written that "A purser's post or a handsome pecuniary recompense would be a small compensation for the services he rendered" (Snow, p. 172). Presumably the "pecuniary recompense" would be thirty pieces of silver. The risk of tainted testimony was obvious, Mackenzie asked promotions for others who were on his side as well, including his nephew, the younger Oliver Hazard Perry (McFarland, p. 177).
Gansevoort was next; naturally he stood by what he had told Mackenzie (Melton, p. 177). All the sailors the court called testified to Mackenzie's qualities as well. Finally, Mackenzie argued before the court that, as long as there were men alive who could navigate the ship, the mutiny might happen (Melton, p. 190). In other words, he justified killing Cromwell and Small not on the basis of guilt but because they might be useful. By that argument, he should have scuttled every ship in the navy, because it might have turned pirate!
Melton, p. 180, thinks that Ogden Hoffman, who was responsible for making the case against Mackenzie, went easy on him. Certainly he did not seek an indictment in the New York courts, which he could have done. In any case, the Court of Inquiry exonerated Mackenzie (Melton, p. 191; Snow, p. 189).
When the newspapers printed Mackenzie's report, with its aggressive piety and its cruelty, the public was outraged. Then the papers got hold of comments by the commander of the North Carolina. When he visited the Somers, he was appalled by the state of the ship and the men: "I have never known the crew of an American man-of-war so dirty and dejected in their personal appearance" (Snow, p. 181; McFarland, p. 178). And the punishments! "From the 3 of June last to the 10 December the log book of the Somers exhibits two hundred and forty-seven punishments with cats and colts, in which, two thousand two hundred and sixty-five lashes were inflicted on that crew of boys!, all within a period of six months and seven days" (Snow, p. 182; McFarland, p. 179).
At the same time, John C. Spencer was seeking to get Mackenzie into a civil court. Cromwell's widow and family \did the same. A judge named Samuel Betts turned it down (McFarland, pp. 174-175) -- it sounds as if he denied the motion because of double jeopardy, even though Mackenzie had been before a naval inquiry, not a full-blown court. (The task of the court was not to decide a penalty for Mackenzie but "to report to the [Navy] Department its opinion as to the right and propriety of these proceedings"; Snow, p. 171.) It's perhaps also significant that Mackenzie's actions took place in international waters, which muddies the situation for crimes. Betts, in his opinion, criticized the Navy and MacKenzie, but he didn't feel authorized to act (Melton, pp. 182-183).
Mackenzie had enough people after him that he decided, before the Court of Inquiry exonerated him, to seek a formal court-martial (Melton, p. 191). He faced more danger there than from the Court of Inquiry, but it would be better than a criminal trial -- plus the naval officers involved would probably have more sympathy than an ordinary jury (McFarland, p. 183). Spencer tried to insert lawyers of his own into the court-martial. They were barred from participation (McFarland, p. 183).
There were five charges, which Snow, pp. 197-198, lists as follows:
I. "Murder on board a United States vessel on the high seas." In other words, Mackenzie was charged with murdering Spencer.
II. "Oppression." Despite what it was called, this was the charge for killing Cromwell.
III. "Illegal Punishment." This was the charge for killing Small.
IV. "Conduct Unbecoming an Officer." This was for the way he harangued and harassed Spencer before killing him.
V. "Cruelty and Oppression." This for the general way he treated his crew.
It strikes me as a difficult set of charges to deal with. Mackenzie killed three men, but he did have evidence of mutiny. His crime was that he took this evidence, which was substantial although not, to my mind, sufficient to prove a capital charge, and inflicted the punishment *himself* rather than bringing the men to a properly constituted court. There is some evidence of malice on Mackenzie's part -- he hadn't wanted Spencer on his ship -- but what he really did was rush to judgment and inflict illegal punishment. A set of charges more clearly reflective of that fact might have served better.
The new Judge Advocate (prosecutor), a fellow named William H. Norris, was more aggressive than Hoffman, although his skills were perhaps not so great (according to Snow, p. 195, he was an anonymous figure who seems almost to have been plucked out of thin air). Although he was given time to interview them before the court-martial, he was unable to gain cooperation for potential witnesses from the crew of the Somers (McFarland, p. 184; Snow, p. 196). So he had no real theory of the case. Indeed, in the course of the trial, Norris would drop two of the charges (McFarland, p. 204; Melton, p. 239).
Norris did his best anyway -- e.g. Gansevoort had to spend six days on the witness stand, mostly sparring with Norris (Melton, pp. 207-212; Snow, p. 207, notes how his memory sometimes became conveniently imperfect); it was a thoroughly hostile confrontation.
There were other odd maneuvers. Norris was clearly able to demonstrate that the "council" had gone into session having prejudged the answer, and that their judgment was clear to the witnesses (McFarland, p. 196; cf. Snow, p. 213), which would surely affect their testimony! Mackenzie had also functionally suppressed young Spencer's hopes of a last message to his parents (McFarland, p. 197). Mackenzie missed three days due to sickness at a very opportune time for him-- but the person who declared him sick was his own ship's surgeon, not an impartial doctor (Melton, p. 138). Norris turned up a lot of inconsistencies in testimony, many of them hinting at some sort of minor cover-up. At one point, Mackenzie started yelling at him because of the implications Norris was making (SNow, p. 217). Norris also found that a lot of officers who said that Mackenzie could not have gone to Saint Thomas to ask for help because asking for help would impair the honor of the United States (McFarland, p. 191, and elsewhere). Imagine that: Three men hung because the United States was too narcissistic to admit imperfection. Norris's final claim was that there was no proof of a mutiny (Snow, p. 230). But he didn't have a smoking gun to prove that someone made something up. Too many of the witnesses said Mackenzie did the right thing.
(Personally, I think there is an excluded middle here: Everyone seems to think that either Mackenzie had to hang the "mutineers" or he had to ignore them and let a mutiny happen. But there is the third option of leveling with the crew, separating one or two other leaders, and keeping the officers armed. That almost certainly would have stopped a leaderless mutiny. But then Mackenzie wouldn't have gotten to watch yet another means of torturing people to death.)
The verdict of the court-martial -- which, Melton notes on p. 242, was not in itself a judgment but a recommendation to the convening authority -- came down on March 28. On every count, the verdict was the same: "Not Proven" (Melton, p. 243; Snow, p. 233). Note that that is not a "not guilty" verdict. It is noteworthy that, though the court didn't find him guilty, it also failed to commend him in any way, which was usually what happened when a man was honorably acquitted (McFarland, p. 205). Indeed, it is believed that some of the officers had voted to convict (the best guess is that three did so; McFarland, p. 206),
The court wasn't exactly finding Mackenzie innocent. But they wouldn't decide the punishment in any case. The matter was referred back to Secretary Upshur, and hence to President Tyler's cabinet. Which of course included John C. Spencer. It is claimed that, on the cabinet meeting of March 29 that had to decide what to do next, Spencer actually attacked Upshur physically (Melton, pp. 243-244). But the cabinet did nothing. Mackenzie was off the hook -- though Snow, p. 235, says President Tyler thought him guilty and declared that Mackenzie would never serve again while he was President.
There was one indirect casualty of the verdict: Ship's surgeon Leecock, still about the Somers, committed suicide three days after the verdict (Melton, p. 244; Snow, p. 238; McFarland, p. 240).
The other men that Mackenzie arrested but didn't get around to executing were eventually set free, probably because everyone wanted the whole story to just go away (McFarland, p. 218).
I wonder if John C. Spencer's failure to gain satisfaction for the execution of his son had to do with the political situation of the time. Spencer (1788-1855), according to DAB, was a skilled lawyer with an amazing memory for detail, and who held many minor political offices in his home state of New York. He won a term in congress as early as 1816, but was then nominated for Senate -- and lost. Meaning he was out of the House, too. He joined the short-lived Anti-Masonic party, survived an assassination scare when he investigated a abduction plot, and was an editor of the English translation of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. By 1840 he was a Whig. (Though he probably had Democrat leanings; he was pro-slavery, and Holt, p. 491, calls him an "apoplectic conservative" and says on p. 692 that he ended up in the conservative "silver gray" faction.)
In 1841, when John Tyler succeeded William Henry Harrison as President, Tyler offered Spencer the post of Secretary of War. In 1843, he was transferred to the office of Secretary of Treasury (Hall, p. 816. Interesting that Tyler never tried to make him Attorney General). Tyler, be it noted, was an un-elected President who was nominally a Whig but became a sort of de facto Democrat (the Whigs "literally read Tyler out of the party"; Holt, p. 137, and says that Tyler picked Spencer because he was an anti-Clay Whig). As a result, Tyler had no political clout -- and a Whig/Anti-Mason in his cabinet wouldn't get much respect either. As witness the fact that, when Tyler nominated Spencer to the Supreme Court in 1844, the Senate rejected the nomination. It didn't help that he had a terrible temper. Also, Hall, p. 816, says that his excessive attention to detail meant that he often didn't see the bigger picture. I wonder if his son became rebellious partly in reaction....
Mackenzie went on to write a life of Stephen Decatur, serve in some minor diplomatic posts, and spend more time in naval service. Based on his DAB entry, his death in 1848 was due to natural causes; Melton, p. 254, says he contracted a disease while in service in the Mexican War and eventually died of it. Snow, p. 248, however, says that he was back at his home in Tarrytown after the war, and on September 13, 1848, he went out on a ride, and when he arrived at home, a stablehand found him still in the saddle, stone dead, presumably of a heart attack. He was 45 years old (McFarland, p. 261).
Although Mackenzie was never punished, except for being shunned, the Somers affair did result in a more strenuous campaign to start an actual naval academy, so that unqualified midshipmen would no longer be sent to sea unprepared. Anapolis was founded in 1845 (Melton, p. 255).
The Somers served on blockade duty during the Mexican War. Her commander collapsed, leaving her in the hands of her first lieutenant, Raphael Semmes (later to gain fame as the commander of the C. S. S. Alabama in the Civil War.) Riding high in the sea because most of her supplies were used up, she was chasing another vessel when a storm came up and capsized her, killing many of her crew as she went down (Melton, pp. 256-258; Snow, pp. 248-249; McFarland, pp. 249-250). Truly an ill-omened vessel!
I find it interesting that the general naval histories I have read (e.g. Howarth, pp. 171-172) think the mutiny was real, and Mackenzie justified; they regard the controversy as a tempest in a teapot. But the three detailed examinations I have read (McFarland, Melton, and Snow, which seem to be the most recent books as of this writing) all think that Mackenzie went too far, and that he was a self-righteous jerk who got away with it.
All that I've read inclines me to the latter view, and leaves me disturbed about America's lack of self-reflection. Was Philip Spencer a completely useless nut? Yes, and the world might have been better off without him. (Though it's worth remembering that he was only eighteen; it's possible he would have grown out of it.) Was there a plan for a mutiny? Probably, although it's one thing to talk about a mutiny and another to go through with it. We have no evidence that Spencer would actually have gone through with it, and no evidence that he had enough supporters for it to have succeeded. While it is likely that a lot of sailors disliked Mackenzie, that doesn't mean they would have wanted to turn pirate!
In any case: Was Mackenzie legally authorized to form a committee that was both prosecutor and jury? No. Was he empowered to execute three sailors on his own authority? No. Even were this allowed, was he morally justified in doing so without allowing the accused to make a defense? No. Was it moral to execute them on ten minutes notice? No.
The clear conclusion: On the pretense of authority he did not have, Alexander Slidell Mackenzie. murdered three men. Spencer was worthless. Mackenzie, though, was a self-righteous prig, a sadist, and a man who actively enjoyed seeing people die. His motto wasn't "arbeit macht frei," but there was a lot of that attitude about him. He should never have been in charge of any warship, let along a training ship. He certainly should have been cashiered, if not worse.
Of course there were other people who bear some blame. The Navy should not have sent forth the Somers in such an overcrowded state (so that there was no way to confine the offenders) and without Marines (so there was no one to fight a potential mutiny). Gansevoort may have over-awed his subordinates in the commission that condemned the three. But Mackenzie was the ship's captain. He had the final word.
And, in any case, while Spencer might have planned mutiny because that's the kind of guy he was, what are the odds that the crew would have listened had not Mackenzie been such a harsh disciplinarian? (I note that flogging was to be abolished in the U.S. Navy over the next decade, despite the objections of Mackenzie's friend, mentor, relative-by-marriage, and defender Matthew Calbraith Perry; McFarland, p. 252.)
The worst of it is, modern psychology indicates that punishing one person "pour encourager les autres" rarely works; people only learn by suffering immediate consequences of their *own* mistakes. Even if all of Mackenzie's decisions had been right, they likely wouldn't have helped had there been a real mutiny in train.
Decades later, Thurlow Weed in his autobiography would report on things he had heard from Gansevoort's family and Gansevoort himself. According to this claim, Gansevoort at one time told Mackenzie that the information from the council's examination of the witnesses did not produce a clear result, and Mackenzie basically ordered him to go back to the council and find a guilty result. Mackenzie also specified the questions to be asked (Snow, p. 245). Weed also implied that the result told on Gansevoort, who aged rapidly thereafter and did not advance very rapidly in the Navy; when he did finally get a ship, he wrecked her and ended up facing a court-martial. He died in 1868, having seen a promising career significantly blighted (Snow, pp. 246-247). This, we must stress, is hearsay, and hearsay retold forty years later, but it is additional evidence of Mackenzie browbeating his junior officers to get what he wanted when the evidence did not support it.
The song about the event is mostly accurate insofar as it supplies details as opposed to hot air:
-- "It was the Somers, graceful, swift, as trim a little brig As e'er was modeled by shipwright or sailor helped to rig." True; she was very trim and fast.
-- "They're sounds that ne'er were heard before among a Yankee crew." This depends on your definitions -- pirates might have been hung from the yardarm, or sailors convicted of other crimes -- but it is certainly true that there were no previous mutinies reported on an American naval ship.
-- "Of three poor men, but men as brave as walked the Somers's deck." This is going a little far; even if Cromwell and Small were innocent, Spencer was certainly not worth the ship's biscuit he had eaten. It's just that that's not a crime.
-- "And without form of law, three men to such a death can doom?" This is correct. Only a court-martial could give a sentence of death, and Mackenzie could not, and did not, convene a court-martial.
-- "A lubber's heard a wild boy's yarn that makes his cheek grow pale, And straightway to the quarter-deck he tells the won'drous tale." More or less correct. It was Purser's Assistant Wales who heard Spencer's invitation to mutiny, and he was not a sailor or professional seaman.
-- "Small and Cromwell stand, bold men and sailors true." Small and Cromwell were, of course, two of the executed men, and they were indeed professional sailors.
-- "Starboard young foolish Spencer stands; the tears are in his eye." He was certainly young (eighteen years old) and foolish, though he is also the only one for whom there is direct, if perhaps insufficient, evidence of guilt.
-- "He thinks of home, his father, friends, his mother's fond caress." In fact one of the things Mackenzie reported Spencer as saying is that his death would kill his mother. He was fairly close to correct; she was dead within two years.
-- "hark! a gun sends forth its smoky breath. 'Whip!' -- instantly upon the word, their eyes are sealed in death." -- Correct. The signal to hang the men was the firing of a cannon, whereupon an officer would cry "whip!" to actually raise the ropes. Mackenzie ordered the gun fired; it was Gansevoort who cried "whip!" (Melton, p. 151; Snow, p. 149).
-- "'Three cheers' the captain cries." True. Mackenzie, after one of his extended sermons, *ordered* the crew to cheer the execution (Melton, p. 153; Snow, p. 150). And, since they were obviously in danger of being his next victim, what could they do?
-- "That over in their ocean tombs these corpses we will lay." -- The corpses were indeed buried at sea.
Those lyrics represent something like a fifth of the poem. The rest is mostly moralizing of one sort or another. It's a tale well worth telling, but the poem would have been better were it no more than a third as long.
The case was widely publicized at the time (as demonstrated by the existence of a poem about it). Mackenzie's defense was published at the time, and is now available on Google Books: "Case of the Somers Mutiny Defence of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie Commander of the US Brig Somers." There are many articles about it, and at least five modern modern books:
- Harrison Hayford, The Somers Mutiny Affair, Prentice-Hall, 1959
- Philip J. McFarland, The Affair of the Somers, Schocken Books, 1985 (cited here)
- Buckner F. Melton Jr., A Hanging Offense: The Strange Affair of the Warship Somers, Free Press, 2003 (cited here)
- Richard Snow, Sailing the Graveyard Sea: The Deathly Voyage of the Somers, the U.S. Navy's Only Mutiny, and the Trial That Gripped the Nation (cited here)
- Frederic F. Van de Water, The Captain Called It Mutiny, Washburn, 1954.
Varous sources suggest Melville's Billy Budd was inspired or informed by this story. Melton, p. 253, acknowledges the suggestions but reminds us that the similarity in plots is not particuarly close. Since Gansevoort was Melville's cousin, the author almost certainly followed the case closely. But there is no proof of connection. Melville's poem "Tom Tight," by contrast, seems to be universally conceded to have been inspired by the Somers affair. - RBW
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